To the Beloved

I surrendered to You,
and you completed me.

Then I began searching for You,
and you escaped me further
each time I got close.

I looked all over,
and sometimes I thought I'd found You~
but I kept looking

and You appeared
and told me to stop looking
for You

and I had trouble doing that,
because I hadn't found You

So I crossed the ocean, and
sat in the burning desert sun~
still You could not be found

and when I was really frustrated
with You
You came once again
and invited me to stop searching

And I knew not what else to do
so I stopped looking

And there You were~
except You were not You
and I was not me

It was all along I
that was sought,
and Grace that was found.

Where God Is

"God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
                         ~Corpus Hermeticum of the 3rd Century:
 What is it that we call God, aside from the images, ideas, and assumptions that have been handed down to us--and sometimes shoved down our throat?
This phrase "God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere" is such an accurate pointer for the true and living nature of God.  If we take God to be a person, or thing, or even some 'force with an intention' we miss the real thing.  Likewise, if we assume that there is no greater essence than our material world is just as much of a misunderstanding.
In order to see the real and actual nature of God we have to hold both formlessness and form simultaneously.  If God is God, it must be everything everywhere.  And, if God is God there must be nothing that is not God.  Otherwise, what we call God is a fantasy in our mind.
When God is That which contains your life and also who and what you are, then God is real, and living, and nowhere else but right Here now.
With very good reason this word God has a great deal of stigma attached to it, because the distortions that have been made of this very simple and intimate Presence have been widespread and used for all sorts of violence.
So, let us give this word God back to the Truth of itself so that we needn't run from a concept that no longer serves our awakening.  If, though, we can see the real and true nature of God, we will no longer run, and we will no longer seek more understanding, nor will we cling to material reality as any more real than the non-material reality.
Ultimately, God is your own Self, and my Self, and the Self of all things everywhere.

Locate your Self and you locate God~
As with God, your Self has no actual circumference, and its center is everywhere all at once.

Relationship with Fear

The one thing that is almost universal about fear is that we all want to avoid it...naturally.  It may even be built into our DNA to avoid pain, discomfort, and unease.  And, for many good reasons, that is perfectly appropriate.  However, there is a way in which, through our attempting to avoid fear and discomfort, we actually generate our own suffering.  We actually, as human beings, put an extraordinary amount of time and energy into securing a sense of comfort and avoiding a sense of discomfort in order to establish a sense of 'personal solidity' that will help us feel safe and invulnerable to ever present tides of pain, sickness, dis-ease, and finally, death.
Spirituality is in many cases the further attempt to find and secure a sense of safety, or a sense of having some ground beneath our feet.  But the real purpose of our 'spirituality' is the possibility to encounter our fear, our insecurity, and our groundlessness directly.  In one sense our true security lies in a total absence of security, our true fearlessness lying in the absence of any 'safe place' to reside.
Our relationship with fear need not be one where we must get rid of fear, or abolish fearful thoughts....Rather, our relationship with fear is one where we enter in directly to the fear, removing all sense of security and safety in order to see that there is a huge void that we exist eternally in.  In resting in this enormous void, we find that even without a sense of security or safety, who and what we are is eternally safe, eternally secure.  It was simply in our imagination of what we were securing safety from and security of that we missed this eternally present abode.
Life then becomes an opportunity to encounter all the ways in which we seek security and protection of an image of ourselves, and how that leads to deeper delusion and suffering.  It becomes an on-going investigation into deeper and deeper experiences of having nothing to hang onto, nothing to comfort you, and being willing to see fear for what it is...ultimately useless.
With fear no longer at the helm, life begins to look different...namely, there's really nothing wrong, nothing to be fixed, nothing to find, nothing to become~
we finally have the freedom to just Be.

Causeless Ceaseless Bliss

Ananda, Bliss is what we so crave as 'spiritual' people.  We want to escape the turmoil of this existence and its unenlightened people and hold up in some Nirvana....this is all a huge waste of time!  If we think that bliss is forthcoming, that its in some expanded awareness or sense of ourselves, than its not really bliss that we're after.  Bliss is only right here, not in some fulfillment of an idea of enlightenment....we are very arrogant in our search for bliss, and also in the thinking that we've found it. 
Bliss is the ground on which we all stand, it is not some feeling you get after your chakras are all illumined the right way.  Bliss is the ruthless simplicity of this drop of water on this blade of grass.  Bliss is not some special state or experience. 
Nor is bliss coming and going.  If it comes and goes it's not bliss, for bliss is always here underneath every coming and going.  This is why when we attach ourselves to a blissful experiences or go chasing a blissful experience we suffer--our suffering is letting us know we're in a fruitless journey, for what we seek is right here before we ever take a step. 
My urging to you is to discover yourself to be that Bliss.  In order to discover that you must find out what does not come and go.  What is both ceaseless and causeless....
A few really huge experiences or a couple hits of samadhi, or some major intuition you may have does not indicate that you've discovered the ground of Being as your own Self.  And if you think you've got it and someone else doesn't, the only thing you've got is a delusion.
This causeless, ceaseless Bliss is ruthless--it will consume every image, idea, and identity until only Itself remains.

Emptiness and Humanness

In our culture and society we put so much attention and energy into becoming somebody, with a deep fear of being nobody.  So the most appropriate medicine for many of us is Emptiness, and the realization of no-self.  While that might be good medicine for somebody clinging to their somebody-ness, it can be nauseating for somebody who gets stuck in emptiness and thus negates his or her humanness.
With a tight grip on emptiness and no-self life becomes very dreary, grey, and dead...what is needed is the realization of the fullness of emptiness only found within this very life, this very human being.  Some "spiritual" people get trapped trying to become nothing and nobody, all the while attempting it with a hollow, miserable sense of self.  Or, in avoidance of being a miserable self, we go about trying to become something bigger or better.
There is a space in which we are neither a nobody nor a somebody, right where the Truth of who one really is remains inseparable from this very life.  We are neither the absolute nor our human experience, we are both our human experience and absolute existence...holding neither side reveals the true non-duality of our Spiritual nature and human nature. 
Finally, Heaven and Earth are not separated at all.

Total Faith

True and total Faith has nothing to do with beliefs.  Total Faith is knowing.  The difficulty is in trying to describe what that Faith is or what is known.  Total Faith is what relies on nothing at all.  Total Faith is what arises when you have discovered your true nature.  Awakening erases the believer in us and makes us what we were believing in... from that, Total Faith becomes our life...who we are....what we are.  It is a faith that goes beyond the believer and its object of belief.  Total Faith ends our belief oriented faith.  It takes the whole structure of our belief and turns it around so that we have become what we were believing in.
I cannot say have total faith that you will get everything you want. I cannot say that total faith holds promise for what one is seeking.  Total Faith is itself the means and end.  It is the deepest desire of the heart, and the fulfillment of all longing.  It is Life, unhinged.  As Total Faith, we no longer rely on anything either outside ourselves or inside ourselves....Total Faith annihilates all of our conceptualizations and puts our life in direct contact with the Source of all Being.  In direct contact with the Source one becomes Faith itself.  All need, all desire, all hope is unnecessary because one knows oneself to be the Totality.

Blown Wide Open

The phrase "blew my mind" is such an accurate  description of what occurs when you see who you truly are.  What is most immediate about an experience of Truth or God is that you recognize that your mind isn't capable of containing that Presence.  You realize that what you're experiencing in that very moment is the Totality of Everything everywhere.  The mind, being this little device revolving around 'me' is never gonna get it...the mind is never going to wrap its understanding around the Infinite.  Being blown wide open is to have your mind humbled by the vastness of what you are.
For many of us that can be quite a terrifying ordeal because we are so accustomed to being able to understand, relate, and conceptualize our world.  Just the slightest kiss of Reality shows you that that's all a big joke.  It shows you that what you have held yourself together as is merely an image on the surface of an ocean that is endless. 
The ocean that is our own Self is constantly inviting our lives to be blown wide open, but it is our attempt to always put a lid on things and keep them manageable that we avoid this 'being blown wide open'.  It may also be that we at some time had this little kiss and because it was so big and huge and held so much energy we're simply not willing to look.
It is very useful to see what prevents your life from being blown open, or what keeps your life from falling apart.  It is often the case that what keeps your life from falling apart is the very thing that keeps life feeling fragile, broken, and full of innumerable sufferings.  It is not that I, or Life, or the Divine wants your destruction or to blow you up.  It is simply that when we hold an idea, image, or belief about what we are, that little 'me' is going to have to be seen through at some point or other because it is ultimately unreal.  The Real will eventually erode, blow up, or simply reveal Itself to Itself and make this illusion of who we think we are totally transparent.
Spiritual Awakening is just a possibility to light the fuse, close your eyes, and say good-bye.
Then, you see that you haven't gone anywhere, nor could you go anywhere.
You are Here.

Change and Transformation

Change doesn't come about through trying to change, change comes about when whatever is standing between you and the change is let go of.  For many us what stands in the way is our very own effort to transform.  When we attempt to transform or change anything, we automatically set up whatever quality, condition, or circumstance that we are attempting to change as a problem.  All problems will increase in degree simply by our desire to change them.  To include within oneself whatever it is that one is attempting to  change frees the problem from being a problem to get rid of.  The problem simply persists out of our resistance, or unwillingness to experience it.  In a sense  change is impossible until we're no longer wishing for it.
It is a ruthless transformation that unfolds when effort and striving to change have fallen away.  The more that we realize our own powerlessness and inability to change ourselves, the more room we actually allow for real transformation.  Up til now you thought you could do it, but it is only when you realize that you can't do it that real transformation is possible.

Being Water

Look at the example of water, see how water does not fight for itself.  See how it bends and flows, evaporates, and is a total example of non-resistance, non-effort, and non-striving.  And--as the Tao te Ching says, "there is nothing so powerful as water to erode a mountain".   Water's power lies in its total non-trying and it therefore follows the natural way of all things.  Water has no will, nor is it  predetermined...it just is as it is when you find it just like it is. Following the example of water we give up both willfulness and no-will.  We simply abide in the way things are.

On the Nature of Thought

First thoughts have no parents,
but all thoughts bare children.
All the offspring have no souls,
because at first there was no ancestor.
Thoughts arise to describe reality--
but it can't be done.

Thoughts are not trustworthy, and thoughts are also not an enemy.  Thoughts are just thoughts, they come and they go.  They, in and of themselves, have no reality or substance.  All thoughts arise first because we identify ourselves as some person, or some thing.  When we give rise to a single thought, it rises up first from the sense of 'I'.  From 'I' all thinking, conceptualizing, describing, opinions, and evaluations are derived.  Without first having that primary 'I' concept, all thoughts are irrelevant to the individual.  The only importance or significance that we give to thought is the degree to which we identify with what the thoughts are saying, "their stories".  And, actually, the less importance or attachment we give to our thoughts, the less thought runs our lives. When thought is no longer running the life, then one is free from the 'virtual' life, and living in the actuality of things...Reality.

On the other hand, thought is not to be made the enemy, because making thought bad entrenches the thinking even more than identifying with it.  It is only a thought that wants to get rid of another thought.  It is only an identification that sees a particular thought or concept as problematic.  Who you are cannot be determined by a thought, nor can who you are be determined by resisting thought.
It is actually possible to neither identify with thinking nor resist thought- but to simply recognize that thought is thought, it is impermanent, changing and ultimately unreliable.

The Ecstasy of this Moment

Ecstasy is simple, it is when we complicate it by attaching so many expectations and needs on our state that we actually distort the true simple ecstasy that's here now.  Expecting ecstasy is to overlook ecstasy, to wait on it is to postpone its right here right now reality.  Look for nothing to be better, and find that it is better than we could have made it. 
As the 6th Zen patriarch said, The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
If we don't prefer ecstasy over anything else, we experience the ecstasy of this moment.  Ecstasy can even look like pain.  It can look like sadness. It can look like ecstasy.
Life itself is ecstasy.  Not our notion of ecstasy, that's a fantasy.
One cannot find the ecstasy of the present, one can only be it.  Finding would require that you were separate from it, but to be it is the simplest thing we could ever do.

Green Tea

Awakening is,
my cup of golden green tea
what else?
The Buddha didn't have anything
on my cup of tea--
flower wilts,
green tea strong